wikileaks

TeleSur | – – The U.S. has not formally laid charges against Assange, but many within the new administration are signaling a hostile approach. United States Attorney general Jeff Session said the country was stepping up its efforts against leaks and that the arrest of WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange was now a “priority.” While U.S. […]

Barack Obama

Assange Agrees to Extradition if US Releases Chelsea Manning

contributors

TeleSur | – – Manning is currently serving a 35-year sentence in solitary confinement for handing over 700,000 sensitive documents from the U.S. State Department. WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange will agree to be extradited to the United States if President Barack Obama grants clemency to the former U.S. soldier Chelsea Manning, jailed for leaking documents, […]

Authoritarianism

WikiLeaks Release 300K Emails Related to Turkey’s ruling Party

contributors

TeleSur | – – The group leaked the documents despite being under a major cyber attack for more than 24 hours by suspected allies of the Turkish government. WikiLeaks released its first batch of leaked emails from Turkey’s ruling Justice and Development Party, or AKP, Tuesday. Founded by President Recep Tayyip Erdogan, the whistleblowing group […]

Afghanistan

Top Ten Things Ted Cruz did to the NSA and other Security Agencies that Edward Snowden Couldn’t

Juan Cole

Edward Snowden’s revelations about the excesses of the National Security Agency have so far had no effect whatsoever on actual practices. But Ted Cruz’s conspiracy to shut down the American government as a bargaining ploy in his quest to stop the working poor from being able to see a doctor has been much more effective […]

censorship

Greenwald Partner falsely detained as Terrorist: How to Create a Dictatorship

Juan Cole

How to turn a democracy into a STASI authoritarian state in 10 easy steps: 1. Misuse the concept of a Top Secret government document (say, the date of D-Day) and extend classification to trillions of mundane documents a year. 2. Classify all government crimes and violations of the Constitution as secret 3. Create a class […]

CIA

PRISM: The US Government is mad at Bradley Manning for doing to it what it is Doing to All of us

Juan Cole

Bradley Manning, who spilled the beans on the US blowing away of unarmed Iraqi journalists and overlooking war crimes by the US military and allied Iraqi troops, released thousands of low-level cable messages. He has been charged by the US government with thereby being a traitor, giving aid and comfort to the enemy. It is […]

Iraq War

New Pope has Opportunity to Improve Christian-Muslim Relations

Juan Cole

Pope Benedict XVI’s suprise announcement on Monday that he plans to resign at the end of this month marks a potential generational change in the leadership of the Roman Catholic Church. His successor has an opportunity to revive the breakthroughs of the Second Vatican Council in promoting inter-religious dialogue, and repairing the Church’s troubled relationship […]

US politics

Was Aaron Swartz a Cyber-Criminal or a Martin Luther King, Jr. of the Internet? (Thompson)

Juan Cole

Christie Thompson writes at ProPublica: When Reddit co-founder and internet freedom activist Aaron Swartz committed suicide last Friday, he was facing up to 13 felony counts, 50 years in prison, and millions of dollars in fines. His alleged crime? Pulling millions of academic articles from the digital archive JSTOR. Prosecutors allege that Swartz downloaded the articles because he […]